Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
by Matthew Restall · first published 2003
33% recommend67% neutral
Here is an intriguing exploration of the ways in which the history of the Spanish Conquest has been misread and passed down to become popular knowledge of these events. The book offers a fresh account of the activities of the best-known conquistadors and explorers, including Columbus, Cortes,and Pizarro. Using a wide array of sources, historian Matthew Restall highlights seven key myths, uncovering the source of the inaccuracies and exploding the fallacies and misconceptions behind each myth. This vividly written and authoritative book shows, for instance, that native Americans did not t
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…two roomfuls of silver may have had something to do with it)... but, again, it wasn't technology that let Pizarro win, it was politics, the same kind of thing that let the Manchus conquer China. See _Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest_ for details on both. You may even want to read _Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness_ -- an extremely, exuberantly partisan Catholic history of the conquest of Mexico (but still adventuresome,…
on “Want Passionate Kids? Leave 'em Alone” ↗I can't read the (paywalled) article, but I did read the book "Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest" by Matthew Restall, summarized in [1]. In said book the author posits that the Spaniards were mostly outnumbered and resorted to "theatrical violence" as a way to exert control over the population…
on “Contested Legacy of the Conquistadors” ↗…conquistadors being severely outnumbered, glazing their exceptional fortitude and skill etc. That narrative (from Guns, although the article uses The Last Days of the Incas as the source) has been critiqued in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest[2] which among other things points out how Germs doesn’t mention or properly contextualize the native allies that Pizzaro had. Again I just skimmed it (for a mere 20 minutes) but I didn’t find much mention…
on “Conquest of the Incas” ↗